Poor Attitudes and Lost Opportunities

[December 31, 2018] As we end the year 2018, many of us will be looking back at those things we’ve gained intellectually and perhaps also at our lost opportunities. While lost opportunities are often a subject with family and friends, what is often missing from the conversation are the poor attitudes that drive them.

I use the term “poor” attitude rather than bad or negative as a descriptor because it doesn’t take much for anything short of a positive attitude to have us lose opportunities. When we are in any relationship with others (e.g., at work, home, or play), how we come across to others will affect the way they treat us.

If you have a poor/bad/negative attitude, it is likely others will not tell us about opportunities; intentionally or not, we will never find out. For example, a good friend of mine has a daughter attending graduate school in engineering. She is smart and motivated. But she is also disrespectful to her father; my friend. He can afford to help her with the tuition but he refuses because her attitude is not good.

Whether the lesson of my friend’s daughter is lost on her or not, we see that she clearly lost the opportunity to have her tuition paid in full, plus getting some walking-around money. Her poor attitude will forever taint their relationship and she will most probably not even know it.

Poor attitudes frequently translate into lost opportunities. Those with poor attitudes are also likely to blame others for their failures and troubles in life. We’ve all seen it. The employee who sees a lack of fairness or some other perceived slight and wears this chip on their shoulder. People just don’t like it and will act accordingly.

My friend’s daughter hasn’t come around to the understanding that when you act like others owe you something, or that others are to blame for your circumstances, or that you are somehow superior, then you will lose opportunities. The sad part is that my friend’s daughter, like so many like her, will never know what they’ve lost.

Your attitude makes all the difference in how well you will succeed in life or fail. The solution is simple; obey the rules, work hard, and have a good attitude. I will certainly be working on improving my attitude in the New Year.

24 thoughts on “Poor Attitudes and Lost Opportunities”

What’s really tough is when your boss has a bad attitude all the time. It is truly hard to go to work and get things done. I’ve had to endure it and I expect everyone else has also. What I learned from him was what NOT TO DO (thanks Gen. Satterfield for educating me that you can also learn from a**holes too).

Much is written about bad attitudes these days and I believe most of us know that it means poorer health, less lifetime satisfaction, overall poor relations with others, and on and on. Why don’t people just realize this and make the proper adjustments? Maybe a psychologist can tell me. Oh, yes, we all have a bad day now and again and have an off-putting attitude. We pay the price, realize it, apologize to those around us, and then get on with our lives. Others, unfortunately, don’t. They will pay a lifetime price.

I agree. And I see pattersn in whose these people are. For example, if you have grown up in an inner city, you are MORE LIKELY to have a bad attitdue. I’m told its because they are told all their lives that people “owe” them something. Of course, they are getting it so the bad attitude.

Me too, I agree with Max and Eric. Folks who also live in poor neighborhoods of cities have very poor attitudes. This is a generalization, of course, and doesn’t apply to all. Just an observation on my part. Also, young men have the worst attitudes.

Happy New Years Eve. I suppose some of us will be staying up drinking alcohol until the wee hours of the morning. Not me. Ha Ha. I’ll be in bed at 10:00pm so that I can go to work at 5am on New Year’s Day. Wonderful.

I must agree. Yes, if you have a bad/poor attitude, then you should expect it to work to your disadvantage. Sorry but that is the way life is. The biggest issue is that you will never even know about it. In the past, people would tell you to your face. Today, with the treats posed, they will just ignore you and your needs.